Along the Way; Good Morning, Irene; Little Altars Everywhere; Secret Keeper; Reformed Vampire Support Group

Martin Sheen and his oldest son, Emilio Estevez, teamed up to chronicle their father/son journey through life and Hollywood in "Along the Way". It was very nicely done and I enjoyed it. Martin was only 21 when Emilio was born, so they kind of grew up together.

"Good Morning, Irene" is another Irene Adler mystery by Carole Nelson Douglas. I really like these books. Irene and Nell get pulled into investigating the mysterious suicides of a sailor when his dead body washes up with the same strange markings as another body that Irene examined several years before, who also died by drowning. Then Godfrey rescues a young girl who is trying to drown herself, and she has the same strange tattoo. What on earth could a nice, well brought up young girl have in common with two crusty old sailors? Why, buried treasure of course!

I reread Rebecca Wells' magnificent "Little Altars Everywhere". When I first read it, back in 1994, before it was incredibly popular, I fell in love with the name Siddalee and decided when I finally got a dog she would be red and I would name her Siddalee.

Meet Siddalee, my little dachshund, who suffers from none of the same low self esteem issues her namesake deals with. My Sidda is fabulous and she knows it!

Sandra Boyd's "Secret Keeper" was pretty good. It was about a young lady serving in Queen Kathryn Parr's household, and she has an interesting theory on what happened to Kathryn and Thomas Seymour's daughter, Mary, who was born shortly before Kathryn died of childbed fever, and six months before Thomas was executed for treason. There is no historical record of little Mary Seymour after the age of two. She was destitute, since all her father's wealth went to the crown after his execution, and no one in her family wanted the expense of caring for a child who was cousin to the king. Many historians believe young Mary died and her burial spot is lost to history. Boyd theorizes that Juliana, the young lady so close to the Queen, smuggled Mary out of the country to Ireland and raised her as her own. It's a nice thought.

And finally, a funny twist on vampire books, Catherine Jinks' "Reformed Vampire Support Group". The life of a vampire is not nearly as glamorous as Nina makes it out to be in her fiction. Due to their limited diets of guinea pigs, they are always sick and weak but Nina and her fellow reformed vampires are determined not to lose control and feast on humans. When one of their own is staked, Nina and her friends decide to find out who's on the hunt and end up getting mixed up in an underground werewolf fighting ring. It was definitely different!